


Wallflower

by hydreig0n



Category: Naruto
Genre: Haruno Sakura is So Done, References to Depression, Unreliable Narrator, emotional detachment, tw: the mindset presented in this fic may be upsetting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:23:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21710698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydreig0n/pseuds/hydreig0n
Summary: The battle was long and bloody. It was won, ultimately.But it was not the heroes who won it.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63





	Wallflower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluehasnoclues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluehasnoclues/gifts).



> mob, king, god, non-believer.
> 
> all worthless.

There had been a time when it had seemed like all that mattered was succeeding. She had tried so hard to be normal, to be good. To be someone that people relied on, to excel.

Sakura had not tried in a very long time now.

Anyone could become a ninja. There was not ever a single doubt whether or not she could become one, because anyone could. They could never say no to another pair of hands, another body to stall the inevitable collapse of the hierarchy. Fodder was always needed.

She didn't want to be fodder, at first. She wanted to be colourful in a black-and-white world, wanted to be the one fruit chosen at the market. She had failed at being that spectacularly. Sakura was not a household name, nor would it ever be. Sakura was metaphorically the one weed in a field full of beautiful flowers, as in everyone around her seemed to bloom. She wasn't even a very good weed.

Naruto and Sasuke were glorious beacons to the world. Her entire graduating class thrived and grew and grew and grew even stronger yet. (Graduating class being a loose term. Graduating meant resources, money, education; finishing the academy meaning you had the freedom to die for a scroll.)

Sakura was envious when she was ten and then thirteen and then dead. Metaphorically. It was just that by that point that it finally dawned: she could never learn a rare jutsu, never take a thousands hits and come up fighting, never believe whole-heartedly in a cause. There would never not be another voice in her head. She could list the things-that-could-not-be forever, but why bother?

When she sees a ninja hold his knife to Sasuke's throat she stands back and guards their employer. When Naruto makes nations move with his words she moves with them. Figureheads from around the world come to tell them to stop their foolishness (because they are scared) and they take those lessons and ignore them and continue to grow nevertheless. She remains fixed in time.

She is nothing, but nothing she is fully. Sakura will sit back every time. _Every single time_. When Kakashi asks her if she would like to become a med-nin, with her infinitesimally above-average control, she says yes. She dutifully takes everything Tsunade gives her. She cries when the time calls for it, laughs too.

Sakura moves out of her parent's house when she is fourteen and they restart their lives without her and her crazy shinobi problems. She can't even resent them for it.

When Sasuke leaves, she chases him, and he tries to cut her with his mouth full of dull teeth. (His head was so full of poison that some of it spilled out and stained the earth.) He leaves thinking he succeeded. He did not, because there is nothing he can say to her that she had not already told herself. His spite was not special.

Right now she was on a field. People were fighting each other and many were dying, so it may go down in history as a national landmark or battle-field, but to her it was just a field.

Sakura crouches next to a man who's blood was spilling out onto the ground. He was crying. Her hands glow, and her mouth moves with senseless words and he is healed. The static in her head does not waver as she walks to the next one like him, then the next. 

Two hundred and five feet away a god is talking. He thinks that if he kills them all he wins. They always do.

Time passes. She thinks they might be losing. It's probably about time they lost for once. Sakura takes a deep breath. Even through the ash and blood, the air is still fresh. Her chakra reserves feel strained, but she hasn't touched the seal on her forehead yet (to think, in the spot she hated the most) and she most likely never will.

She is closer to them now; Kakashi, Naruto, Sasuke and whoever else, when she hears it. It comes from the earth, from the sky, from the wind, from the water. It comes from her.

' _Sakura, Sakura, Sakura. Will you die on your knees?' Yes,_ she thinks. ' _Why? Sweet girl, look at the moon above you. Can you see it? The moon does not have its own light, it doesn't need to. It takes from the sun, and when the sun is no more, in the sky it will remain.'_

_'Sakura. Change the tides my dear.'_

She doesn't believe in gods. Sakura walks towards the ending point. She does not stop to help the wounded. Naruto's voice is like a distant chime to her, soothing and over listened to. It's time they try to kill someone instead.

She is approaching the enemy now. He says something and his power reaches out to her, grasping, trying to get her to cower and die. Sakura has spent a lifetime surprising her instincts, but it is still instinct that snaps the seal on her forehead, that braces her limbs to move.

Chakra erupts from her, so she pulls out a kunai and lunges. Sakura's face is impassive when she kills him, and impassive when her reserves run dry and her immune system turns against itself. Tsunade taught her that.

Her vision is wavering and darkening, but she can still feel Kakashi's hands lift her gently and smell Naruto's tears. Sasuke is standing apart and his chakra says he is just lost.

"I'm sorry, it shouldn't have been this way. Sakura please..." Someone is asking her to stay, hold on just a bit more. There is nothing to hold onto, and the only medic-nin still alive is herself. The irony.

She dies.

Konoha can not quite comprehend it. How such a thing could happen right under their noses, but a little girl is long dead now, so it is too late anyway. They will forget soon.

In the end, Sakura died the best shinobi of all.

Cold, emotionless, victorious.

**Author's Note:**

> i am so sorry about the POV changes and wacky time nonsense


End file.
